Musings on Buddhism and modern global culture, plus a few miscellaneous topics.

Thursday, 3 January 2013

Secular Buddhism - Is it secular, and is it Buddhist?

It's Buddhism Jim, but not as we know it!

The phasers are out for Secular Buddhism

'Secular Buddhism' has been attracting a lot of flak recently. But is 'Secular Buddhism' a misnomer?What exactly is meant by 'secular'? Is the word being misused? And can a system that has been deliberately stripped of all metaphysics, spirituality and transcendence still be described as Buddhism?

Does that fact that Secular Buddhists accept physicalism lead them inevitably down the slippery slope to mechanistic reductionism - the unavoidable conclusion that the mind is nothing more than a biological machine?